Keyword Research Tools

What are the best tools for conducting keyword research?

Every business owner should know what terms they want to be found for via search and the necessary steps to rank for those terms, but they also need an understanding of how their customers are actually searching for their product or service.

How? Keyword research, of course! It’s one of the biggest steps a small businesses can take when looking to increase their rank on Google and ultimately drive more traffic/leads. We rounded up six of our favorite keyword research tools that we utilize on the regular to help our clients rank and attract the right customers.

Google Keyword Planner– Google’s main keyword tool is a great source for keyword research. Keyword Planner shows you how often keywords are searched and how those trends have changed over time, as well as any related keywords. The tool also allows users to filter out negative terms or filter keywords by volume, cost per click, or competitiveness. To access this tool, you’ll need an AdWords account.

SEMRush– For a wide variety of keyword metrics, SEMRush is a great resource. They offer paid and organic search data including cost per click, keyword volume, and related keywords. It’s also handy for competitive analysis because it shows what keywords your competitors are ranking for. To see all the available data, you need a paid account, but you can see some of the metrics for free.

Google Trends– Google Trends is useful in deciding which keywords will give you the most traffic.  This is especially useful for businesses that have a long list of keywords they want to target. You can see how popular keywords have performed over time and in what countries, states, or cities they’re most often searched. You can also compare similar terms such as “attorney” and “lawyer” to see what keywords are searched more often.

Answer The Public– To rank for your keywords, it’s necessary to have content on your site that’s related to them. Answer the Public can help you create content that covers commonly searched queries as referenced by certain keywords. You can sort queries by questions, prepositions, or alphabetically, then visualize the data in a list or graph. If you’d like to see what sort of sites and content are already ranking for those keywords, just click on any idea and it will bring up the Google results.

Search Query Report– If you’re already running a paid campaign, you can use the Search Query Report from Google AdWords to find potential and related keywords. The Search Query Report shows actual phrases typed into Google that your ads showed up for and can give you a look into what users were really searching for.  You can then add these searches to your AdWords campaign, or create content related back to these searches to publish on your site, ultimately creating more opportunities to rank.

Google Searches– The simplest tool to check potential keywords is Google itself. If you’ve ever typed something into Google, you’ve noticed the helpful suggestions Google will offer to finish your query after hitting the space bar. You can further these suggestions by using an asterisk as a “wildcard symbol.” Doing so allows Google to fill in random queries. Similarly, if you scroll to the bottom of your search, you’ll see other Google suggestions for similar searches users have done.

At SEOM, our tagline is “It’s not about clicks, it’s about results.” Good keyword research is the first step to getting the right kind of visitors to your website and can make or break an SEO strategy.  Interested in learning more? Contact the digital marketing experts at SEOM Interactive today to learn how you can maximize your ROI with every click.